


And From The Fog, A Voice

by cookinguptales



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: M/M, ghost story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-24
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 20:50:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5063644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/pseuds/cookinguptales
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only now does Horatio understand what it is to be haunted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And From The Fog, A Voice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sunchales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunchales/gifts).



> Hello sunchales! Between your love of homoerotic subtext and the spooky theme of this challenge, I'm hoping that this little ghost story is right up your alley.

Long before Horatio ever set foot in the castle, he visited it in his dear friend's memories. The two of them would sit together in warmed rooms sharing stories and companionship and long, slow glances. Hamlet's eyes would go far away sometimes, melancholy before the fire, and he'd speak of Elsinore. Sometimes he would describe its enormous, ornate ballroom, and sometimes he'd speak fondly of a spectacular fountain in the courtyard. Sometimes he'd go quieter still, and speak of the way fog would sit heavy on the sound.

Horatio closes his eyes now and then and remembers those times, can almost hear Hamlet's steady breaths by his side and the warmth of a body next to his. It is no longer the fire that makes his eyes burn.

The first time Horatio set foot in Elsinore in form rather than spirit, it was clad in mourning dress and a frown of sympathetic grief. He'd never met Hamlet's father, but he could mourn the death of a certain light in Hamlet's eyes all the same. It was soon replaced by something else, the gleam of obsession, bright and dark and utterly confused in turn. 

That night, the fog was there on the sound. The fog, and other things.

Perhaps it was for the best that he had been unable to talk to the ghost that night, had been unable to help Hamlet shoulder its heavy burden. That ghost was not for him, he now realized. It was a much more familiar, tender ghost that would haunt his nights. He had his own pain to carry, as had his sweet Hamlet.

The ornate ballroom and splendid fountain now belonged to Prince Fortinbras, but they belonged to Horatio as well. He still walked the long, cold hallways of Elsinore, and Norwegian eyes shied away from him. Perhaps they could remember choked grief, an unsteady story, and so, so much blood. Perhaps they pitied him. Still, Fortinbras had not called on him yet to leave, and so Horatio did not. He trailed his fingers along lifeless stone, and tried to ignore the lives and deaths and little hurts that clung to it like cobwebs.

Like Hamlet, he watched the fog upon the sound, and he could hear whispers calling to him from within it. The wind was a gentle caress on his neck that chilled him to the bone, for it was not air but fingertips that he felt on his skin. And sometimes, as he drifted off to sleep, he could see a lone figure seated at the edge of his bed, staring melancholy into the fire.


End file.
